Military air forces use large, typically widebody, aircraft to perform missions such as tanker, transport, bomber, and command and control missions. Numerous electronic, mechanical, and fluid systems and subsystems are integrated to configure a large aircraft for any one of these missions. Additionally, many structural modifications are made to a basic airframe to equip the aircraft to perform the mission. The system integration and structural modifications entailed represent significant large-scale-integration projects and are extremely expensive and time consuming.
As a result, these aircraft generally have been made to perform only one mission. One exception is the tanker/transport aircraft, such as the KC-135 tanker/transport aircraft made by The Boeing Company. While the KC-135 tanker/transport aircraft can perform both tanking and transport missions, the KC-135 is not reconfigurable to perform other missions, such as bombing or command and control. Likewise, currently known bombers or command and control aircraft are not reconfigurable to perform tanking and/or transport missions.
Because of the extreme costs involved in production of such aircraft, air forces have pursued service life extension programs for in-service fleets instead of buying new aircraft. Accordingly, in-service aircraft have become increasingly older. Due to increased aging of airframes, reliability has become lowered. This lower reliability has negatively impacted mission readiness. While mission readiness has decreased, operation and support (O&S) costs have increased.
Increased operational tempos, rapid deployments, and operational commitments would make it desirable for air forces to add aircraft to fleets of tanker, transport, bomber, and command and control aircraft. However, due in part to consumption of limited budgets by increased O&S costs, air forces are not able to pursue production programs for fleets of aircraft that are dedicated to each mission.
An aircraft that could be configured and reconfigured as desired for any one or more of these missions could reduce costs for production (as well as O&S costs) and yet increase operational readiness. However, there is an unmet need in the art for a transformable airplane.